Friday, May 09, 2008

"History of success - Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia have invested together in 50 companies, and separately in hundreds more. Some of the notable successes include; Google, Yahoo, Amazon, AOL, Apple, Citrix, Netscape, Intel, Intuit, Palm, PayPal, Plaxo, Sybase, Sun, Lotus, Electronic Arts, 3COM, Cisco, Oracle, YouTube, and many more.Pattern recognition - John Doerr reflected back on the many successful investments in his career and noted a pattern that is perhaps not politically correct, but a pattern none the less. The most successful investments were in founders that were white, male, under 30, nerdy geeks, with no social life. He rattled off a list of founders that included; Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Larry Page, Sergy Brin, Jerry Yang, David Filo, Jeff Bezos, Steve Case, Marc Andreessen, Scott Cook, and Mitch Kapor. He could have gone on...but he made his point. So, he said when Larry Page and Sergy Brin came along the decision was simple. Hmm...I'm sure there was more to it than that, but there is no doubt it worked out well for Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia.Kleiner Perkins 7 rules - Doerr and Moritz didn't reveal a lot about their investment philosophy so I dug back in my archives for more insight. I was on a "Future Of Software" panel at TiECon East two years ago with Ajit Nazre, a partner at Kleiner Perkins. Ajit said KPCB has 7 rules for startups they invest in. They are;Instant Value to customers - solve a problem or create value with the first useViral adoption - Pull, not push. No direct sales force requiredMinimum IT footprint, preferably none. Hosted SaaS is best.Simple, intuitive user experience - no training required.Personalized user experience - customizableEasy configuration based on application or usage templatesContext aware - adjust to location, groups, preferences, devices, etc."